Soviet Emigres in Israel Find the Road Hard

The phrase wasn’t included in her intensive Hebrew lessons, but Larissa, a new Soviet immigrant, picked it up quickly from the street, where she heard it when looking for a job: Al titkasher eliy anee heetkasher eleha. Don’t call me, I’ll call you.

After more than a year of on-rushing immigration from the Soviet Union, new arrivals are having a hard time finding jobs and houses, and government programs to ease the strain seem to be hamstrung by political infighting.

While not ready to admit having made a mistake by fleeing the Soviet Union, some immigrants are already looking for an exit. Their numbers are small. A whisper that lawyers were canvassing newcomers to offer services for emigration from Israel sent an embarrassing shiver through the government and agencies responsible for absorbing the immigrant wave.

“There is a danger that this great opportunity to strengthen Israel will be ruined. In the short run, housing is a problem, but the longer range problem is jobs,” said Simha Dinitz, head of the Jewish Agency, which arranges the transport of the Soviets to Israel.

“The cream of the new immigrants will not be satisfied at working below their capacity,” warned Deborah Lipschon, a spokeswoman for the Soviet Jewry Zionist Forum, a service and lobbying group for the new immigrants. “They will begin to look to go somewhere else--or not come at all.”

Larissa, 38, a divorced mother of a 14-year-old daughter, worked as a construction engineer in Moscow and took a job as a maid during her first year in Israel. When she finally found a job in her field, she was offered a salary of $600 a month, half of what she heard Israelis beginning such work would earn.

“So I’ve become a vegetarian. That’s why I look so slim,” she said in jest. “Look, my standard of living in the Soviet Union was not bad. It was respectable. I don’t want to do worse here.”

Would she consider emigrating if conditions do not improve?

“I will look into it. You only live once. I have goals for my daughter. If things don’t work out, we’ll leave.”

About 200,000 Soviets fled to Israel last year. During the seven weeks of the Persian Gulf War, 14,700 arrived, a marked decrease from a record-breaking December of 30,000 arrivals. The reduction was due in part to uncertainty over the course of the war, but 25,000 are expected to come this month.

Some immigrants complain of job discrimination and a backlash against their demands for work. “A few Israelis think that the Russians feel that the state, any state, is there to be ripped off,” Link, an Israeli business magazine, noted in an article on immigrant job hunting.

Many observers view the problem as being rooted in a lack of government planning. Political instability and red tape hampers foreign investment, considered an essential ingredient in creating jobs for immigrants. Investment in major projects by the cash-strapped government is also at a standstill, although the Housing Ministry still finds money to build homes and roads in the disputed West Bank and Gaza Strip and has delivered scores of trailer homes for Soviets in West Bank settlements.

Inside Israel, housing starts are inadequate for the numbers of newcomers flooding the country. The latest arrivals are being put in second-class hotels, sometimes four and five to a room, while they await apartment openings.

“The pace of construction is too little, too late,” said Lipschon, who added that “100,000 units are needed this year.”

At the City Tower Hotel in Jerusalem, three floors of 72 rooms are crammed with newly arrived immigrants who share a common kitchen and complaints about their treatment.

“It’s a waste to pay this money to the hotel, instead of putting it into a house,” said Ella Mostovich, a would-be translator who arrived in December. “It’s even hard to look for a job from here. There is one phone on the floor, and you have to stand in line to use it.”

Despite the evident hardships, no one expects the flow from the Soviet Union to dry up soon. Fear of unrest or a conservative backlash under Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev is driving Soviet Jews to seek visas in steady numbers; 300,000 are expected to come this year.

The response of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s government to the crisis has been marked by avid finger-pointing. A couple of weeks ago, Housing Minister Ariel Sharon dramatically resigned to protest inaction, only to return to his post after appeals from his colleagues. It was unclear whom Sharon had to blame but himself for the slowness: He heads an inter-ministerial committee for immigration that is supposed to build houses and provide jobs and business opportunities.

The government also took aim at the Jewish Agency for converting grants for immigrants into loans. The agency responded by saying that it is not responsible for looking after immigrants once they are in Israel and that, in any case, more money will be available to them through loans than in grants.

Finance Minister Yitzhak Modai has asked the United States to provide $2 billion a year to fund the absorption of the Soviets, and the request is expected to be taken up in Washington this fall.

In addition to job and house-hunting problems, Soviets immigrants are running into an undercurrent of suspicion that many of them are not truly Jews and should not have been permitted to come to Israel.

Intermarriages are common in the Soviet Union. Unlike Jewish law, which states that children of a Jewish mother are Jews, Moscow held that almost anyone with Jewish heritage on either side of the family was Jewish. The Law of Return, which permits Jews worldwide to immigrate freely, is also more liberal than strict Jewish law.

Some Soviets complain that the Interior Ministry, dominated by a religious party that is part of Shamir’s ruling coalition, refuses to stamp the designation “Jewish” on their identity cards.